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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/SileasRouhe on 2024-09-23 12:51:57+00:00.
My husband recently went to the doctor for routine blood work/checkup and the doctor suggested a magnesium supplement to help him get to sleep at night. I thought, great! We have magnesium, I’ve been taking it for years. Husband points out that the doctors specified magnesium glycinate. We have magnesium oxide. Didn’t think much if it other than the doctor had mentioned less stomach upset with the glycinate. We promptly got busy and I forgot to order the supplement until last night.
A little history, I’ve been taking magnesium since I was a teenager on and off. I have chronic anxiety. Back then, we called them my happy pills, and it’s possible that they were actually the glycinate because they seemed to help my mood. But once I was out in my own I either didn’t take them, or just went to the drug store and bought whatever supplement was available. Generally the Natures Best Magnesium, which as verified last night is magnesium oxide. I go through phases where I take it, and have taken it based on doctor’s recommendation even, but I have never noticed any improvement in mood. This last go around, the only benefit I noticed was that if I took two it would clear up some constipation with some diarrhea.
As we were laying in bed last night, hubby asked if I ever ordered his magnesium and as I hadn’t we went down the rabbit hole of trying to remember which specific magnesium we needed and I got curious, so googled the difference between oxide and glycinate. The first response was that oxide is used to treat things like constipation and glycinate is used for things like anxiety and sleep. Anxiety and sleep is what I’ve always been told, yet have not in almost two decades felt the result of.
Two decades of shitty sleep that led eventually to a sleep specialist that told me I’m perfectly fine. At least 15 years of trying to manage anxiety with various meds and doctor visits, weekly therapy, and finally most recently after a panic attack that put me in the ER, a psychiatrist. I’m not saying that taking the right supplement would have changed any of that, but I have spent the last two decades thinking magnesium just doesn’t do anything for me. When it turns out I’ve been taking the wrong supplement the whole time.
And as icing on the cake, as I went down my google rabbit hole last night, I ended up on a reddit thread what when I exited out of left me on my reddit home page on my phone, to be immediately informed that an iconic musician in our community was tragically killed in a horrible motorcycle accident. Something I wouldn’t have learned eventually, but really didn’t need to find out as I was trying to go to sleep. Just because I’d put my book down to google magnesium.
TL:DR Googled the magnesium supplement my husband’s doctor recommended only to learn I’ve been taking wrong type for decades, equalling no improvement in anxiety but an increase of diarrhea. Then as a result of the googling learned an iconic musician in our community died. Went to bed very sad.